by J M Gregson
Stanley Freeman had apparently chosen to ignore his father’s clearly expressed intention. Alfred Arkwright’s look of distaste was not for the morality of the action but for the laxity of legal provision that allowed it. He showed just the right amount of reluctance to divulge the details of the will of Stanley himself: he was experienced enough to know that a murder inquiry made this essential, but decorum demanded a little well-bred resentment of this invasion of his territory.
Lambert, his mood still preoccupied with thoughts of the injured mind they had left on the moor, eventually became impatient with this effete and civilized ritual. ‘Mr Arkwright, both you and I know that you’re going to tell us everything eventually. I’d prefer that we didn’t have to wring it from you by means of a long list of questions and answers to satisfy your imagined scruples. Please tell us straightforwardly exactly what Mrs Denise Freeman is left in the will.’
Alfred Arkwright had for a moment the sullen face of a frustrated schoolboy. Lambert had spoken brusquely, probably because his mind was still dominated by the image of Willy Harrison silhouetted against the sky with dog and birds. The solicitor recovered his equilibrium quickly; losing face was the ultimate crime for him, and any ruffling of his urbanity must be taken as a warning. ‘She gets the bungalow, Glebe House, which was the family home, her car, various shareholdings, which will be valued for probate at around £30,000. There are insurance policies which I understand should give her another £50,000.’ Arkwright had proposed to dispense this catalogue as a series of gobbets of information; it was a habit, no more.
‘And the business?’ said Lambert.
‘Mrs Freeman will be entitled to five per cent of the profits per year for the rest of her life.’ If Arkwright thought the arrangement unusual, he gave no sign of it in his demeanour.
‘What about control of the firm?’
‘That passes entirely to Mr Robson, together with the ownership of the company.’
‘Conscience money,’ said Bert Hook, speaking for the first time, without looking up from his notes. Arkwright’s small smile might have been a grudging acknowledgement, might have been a contemptuous dismissal of an idea so squalid and emotional. He put his coffee cup and saucer carefully back on the tray. Speculation was certainly no part of his brief.
For the men before him, speculation was inevitable. George Robson had already indicated that he knew the terms of Freeman’s will and the motive it gave him. No doubt Denise Freeman knew also. Resentment could turn to hatred when nursed in holy wedlock. Many a husband had been killed by an embittered spouse. Lambert wondered how much Denise knew about Margot Jones.
He was reluctant to add the question he knew he must. ‘Were there any other financial bequests?’
‘None. There are no family retainers in the Freeman household.’ Arkwright examined his perfectly manicured nails. His ordered and respectable world did not admit mistresses, though wills sometimes contained puzzling and suggestive clauses. Poor Margot, thought Lambert. The only person who genuinely grieved for Stanley Freeman, perhaps the only one who really needed material provision, was ignored in the will. Stanley’s death had shut her out of his world more finally than the thickest of doors.
The detectives were standing now, ready to go. Perhaps it was their haste that ruffled Arkwright into volunteering information for the first time. He said, ‘There is one provision which strikes me as rather strange.’ His pained expression regretted that he should be beset by any such controversial opinion. ‘Not exactly financial, but I think we could say with financial implications.’ The cautious verbosity reassured him and his tone resumed its former suavity. He reached into the file in front of him, but they all knew he had the detail clear in his mind without such check. ‘It concerns the ownership of a bungalow. No. 3, Acacia Avenue, Oldford. It is occupied at present, I understand, by an elderly lady, who lives there rent-free. A Miss Alice Franklyn.’
‘Who owns it?’ said Lambert shortly. He had tired again of massaging this carefully assumed panache.
‘It was owned by Stanley Freeman. The clause I referred to says that on his decease it should pass to someone else. Not the occupier.’
Lambert was now thoroughly impatient with this absurd ritual of small delays. ‘Who?’ he said harshly.
‘Miss Emily Godson,’ said the solicitor.
Chapter 16
They thought at first that there was no one in the house. Hook rang the bell twice, but there was no sound of answering movement within. Maple Cottage was a comfortable, low-slung building. Its low front wall and wicket gate made one expect a cottage garden, with old-fashioned perennials growing into each other and the scent of honeysuckle overriding more subtle and individual ones.
Probably the garden had originally been like that. And no doubt in those days its fertility had been abundantly supplemented by the products of an outside privy: Bert Hook, who was a modest expert in this field, would willingly have enlarged on what was now denied to a hungry soil. Some time after this radical change in sanitation, the garden had been changed to a more formal pattern. A small, immaculately manicured lawn followed the curve of the path towards the front door. Neat rows of lobelia, tagetes and antirrhinums were already in lusty flower and would soon merge into variegated carpets around the cerise and red geraniums that were dotted among them as specimen plants. It should have been like park bedding, but, perhaps because of the low walls that surrounded it and the absence of straight lines, it remained curiously intimate amid its seed-packet profusion of colour. On the tiny porch which enclosed the front door, a climbing rose dangled its scented, crimson blooms and maintained the memory of the cottage’s older history. Skilfully photographed, it could still adorn the lid of one of those chocolate boxes which take the evocation of a former age as the only guarantee of quality.
Lambert toyed with this thought, studying the angle a photographer would choose. As he looked towards the corner of the cottage, a figure materialized silently at this very point. In silhouette against the light, she might for a second have been part of his fancied Victorian picture. Her neat white blouse had enough lace to be in period, even if its material was manmade and its decorations machined. But the tweed skirt showed sturdy ankles and calves which would have scandalized Victorian mores.
‘You’re early.’ Emily Godson made it sound like an accusation. Hook was glad he had not been caught peering through the windows into an empty house.
‘A little, I’m afraid, Miss Godson.’ Lambert was at his most affable. ‘We had to change our plans and come to see you before Mr Hapgood. I did try to phone you earlier.’ He didn’t tell her that it had been Alfred Arkwright’s one unexpected piece of information that had steered them hither so directly.
‘I’ve been in the greenhouse. I thought I might as well take advantage of the leisure you compelled upon me.’
Why couldn’t the wretched woman accept graciously the windfall bonus of time spent in the garden she so obviously loved? ‘I thought you’d find our interview less embarrassing here than at the station.’ Lambert could threaten if he had to. Then he said, ‘You’ve got your garden looking quite beautiful.’ The three of them looked round, while Hook murmured sycophantic support.
‘You’d better come inside,’ said Emily Godson gruffly, mollified despite her worst intentions. Lambert accepted tea, to Hook’s scarcely muted delight, and presently they sat in a low-ceilinged parlour, balancing Crown Derby saucers with infinite care upon their ample laps.
‘My mother’s. She died four years ago,’ said Miss Godson. Lambert wished the Alfred Arkwrights of this world could be made to dispense information so quickly.
‘She lived here with you?’ It was not just small talk. He wanted to build up as full a picture as he could of his suspects, and he had learned little of Emily Godson from his colleagues’ preliminary reports. ‘She had her children here, nursed my father through his last illness here, died here herself,’ said Emily. It would have sounded sentimental with a different delivery,
but this woman was brisk and matter-of-fact. She would find it easier to conceal than to reveal emotion, even when it was that most laudable love of a daughter who had missed marriage to care for a widowed mother. If marriage was indeed the boon that idea demanded. They looked down the narrow back garden to where the maple which gave the house its name was a mound of amber in the sun. That was where the privy must have been, thought Hook; what a pity not to have a patch of brassicas taking full advantage of its opulent legacy.
‘You have brothers and sisters?’ said Lambert quietly. He was looking at the greenhouse at the other corner of the garden’s extremity. How on earth did anyone manage to keep such a place so tidy? There was not a pot or a box visible between its aluminium glazing bars save those which contained plants; what a contrast to his own large and disorderly glasshouse, where bags of compost mingled with sprays, crocks and discarded grow-bags amid the tomatoes.
‘I have a brother, that’s all,’ said the woman on his left. Something in her tone transferred his attention from the garden to her face. It was in its way an impressive face, of the kind an artist would carve rather than paint: it would need a Rembrandt to capture its suggestion of dignified suffering.
‘I hadn’t heard of a brother,’ said Lambert. He felt a small spurt of guilt at this deliberate inference that he already knew a lot about her when in fact they knew so little. Her brown eyes gazed down the garden. Her strong nose looked very straight in profile. The dark, greying hair was cut short and neat, almost masculine around the strong head. From this angle, the determined chin, the high, clean profile, the unexpectedly long lashes showed the striking beauty she must once have been. The large mouth drooped a little at the corners, so that he willed her to the smile he knew would light up her face. Suddenly he understood, more clearly than if she had complained to him for an hour, that this woman had not had very much pleasure from life. There coursed through him one of the sudden, violent surges of sympathy he thought he had left in his childhood, so that he wanted to reach out and touch her.
He did not do it of course. Heaven knows what the world would do if its Superintendents began to behave in that manner. And, as he sat and coldly reminded himself that this might well be a murderess, she did indeed smile. Not quite the smile he had wanted to restore the face’s lost beauty. It was too rueful for that: not far from Wino Willy’s bitter smile when he had mocked him with rosemary for remembrance.
‘Michael doesn’t live here any more,’ she said. Then she briefly shook her head; perhaps to her as to him it sounded like the title of a play. ‘He went to New Zealand ten years and more ago.’ It was very quiet now. Outside, a robin hopped along one of the neat lines of plants in search of food. None of the three spoke; all of them sensed the woman was about to make some revelation about herself.
‘Mother left him this cottage,’ she said. She glanced at them almost apologetically, as if she should have produced something more dramatic. ‘Mike is divorced. He needs the money from this place to make a settlement with his wife and keep his farm in New Zealand. Very soon now. He’s relying on me to tell him when the market’s right to sell this cottage.’ She forced a bitter-sweet smile at the memory of it. She had been born here, had grown here to womanhood, had cherished this cottage and garden for the best part of five decades. That unexpected riot of colour in the weed-free garden, this sensibly modernized interior, were her doing; they contained something of her, perhaps more than she cared to admit.
It was Bert Hook, who had not owned a home of his own for the first thirty-six years of his life, who was most aware of the emotion under these quiet statements. ‘Why?’ he said indignantly. ‘Why would your mother do that?’ He ignored John Lambert’s admonitory glance, telling him he was moving into areas which should be beyond their concern. And as had happened before when staid Bert Hook acted instinctively, there were unexpected dividends. Emily Godson, leaping to the defence of her dead mother, revealed in the next few minutes what might have taken days of inquiry.
‘Mother never thought I’d have to move. Mike was doing well and was apparently happily married. The idea was that I’d live here for life – or as long as I wanted to. She thought Mike might eventually want to come back here. I think she hoped he would. Anyway, she thought she’d left me quite secure financially. She left me what little money she had and also – ’ She stopped, aghast at where she had been led in defence of the mother who was still so definitely with her in this house.
‘Also…?’ said Hook gently. Emily Godson picked a small piece of dried grass of her skirt, tugged the left sleeve of her blue woollen cardigan a centimetre lower on her wrist, and acknowledged that she could not stop now.
‘There was another property, where my aunt lives – my mother’s elder sister. Mum left that to her, with the clear understanding that it would come to me at her death.’
‘Understanding?’ It was the first time Lambert had spoken for five minutes. He had never expected to sound like Alfred Arkwright. Emily looked at him caustically; these were questions she had asked herself ad nauseam over the last few months.
‘Mother didn’t understand the law and its necessities. Why should she? Dad used to handle all that sort of thing. And Aunt Alice knew all about it and understood. She was my favourite aunt.’ Suddenly this formidable professional woman was near to tears. At this moment, a spotless brown and white cat strolled down the flagged path in the rear garden, elegant, leisurely, too dignified for the petty human concerns within the house. All three of them were glad to observe its progress and wait for Emily to regain control.
‘She still is my favourite aunt,’ said Emily, as if shocked at the disloyalty in her use of the past tense. ‘It’s just that Mother knew nothing about the problems of senile dementia. And still less about the people around who might take advantage of it.’
‘We are talking about 3, Acacia Avenue, I think,’ said Lambert quietly. He had seen where this was leading for some time. He told himself his excitement could not be as unworthy as it felt. They were about to find out more about both the dead man and one of his suspects: this thrill of anticipation was a necessary adjunct of efficient detection.
Emily was not offended, as he had half-expected. She seemed no more than mildly surprised that he knew. ‘It’s a modern detached bungalow,’ she said, falling automatically into the jargon of her profession. ‘More valuable than this. Mum thought she was looking after me carefully. If Aunt Alice hadn’t – ’ Abruptly, she was weeping as the suffering and anxiety she had hugged to herself for months fell out. Again Lambert had to resist the impulse to touch her, to put the arm round the shoulders that such moments seemed to need. The proprieties of objective investigation must be preserved. He suddenly realized the unbending Miss Godson was longing to throw herself weeping on the breast of the mother she had lost. Hook gathered the crockery carefully together on the tray; any activity was better than this embarrassing detachment.
When Emily resumed, she dropped her sentences in a flat monotone which only emphasized how brittle was the control she had won back. ‘Aunt Alice isn’t really fit to be on her own any longer, but she doesn’t want to move. A home help goes in each morning and I go round every evening. I was there on the Wednesday night that Freeman was killed.’
Automatically, Lambert clocked up the questions. How accurately did she know the time of the death? How much was the word of a senile relative worth in the establishment of an alibi?
If Emily knew she had forestalled questions for the moment by pressing on with her account, she gave no sign of it, for she spoke almost like one under hypnosis. ‘We never know quite what we’ll find when we go into the bungalow.’ There came an unexpected flashing smile at some recollection of humour amid the tragedy, but she did not enlighten them about the incident. ‘She’s quite harmless, childlike and rather sweet. And not responsible for her actions. Three months ago, she signed the bungalow away to someone else. He’d been round to see her with flowers and cakes. Just three times. It’s often
those closest who suffer as the mind begins to go, you know.’ She offered the last observation as if recounting a detached case history, but the tears sprang anew.
‘That person was Stanley Freeman?’ said Lambert. It seemed cruel to wring every detail from her distress, when Arkwright had already given them the clue.
She nodded, not shocked that he should know. ‘Stanley had heard about her from me. He offered to ease the burden for me by going to sit with her occasionally in the evenings. That was when she signed the bungalow away. It wasn’t Aunt Alice’s fault. Ten years ago she’d have seen through him straight away and sent him packing.’ She was as anxious to defend her aunt as she had been her mother a few minutes earlier. ‘It’s age that does it,’ she said bleakly, as the tears coursed down her cheeks and dropped unheeded on to her white blouse. For a moment she contemplated that most inexorable of enemies, lying in patient wait for her.
‘I think you should contact Arkwright and Sons in Oldford,’ said Lambert. ‘You may find some good news about 3, Acacia Avenue.’
She was so little cheered by the news that he felt cheated. Then he realized that she was exhausted. This parade of emotions by one who had practised containment and self-sufficiency for years had drained her more than it would have done others.
‘He said he’d arranged things so that I would get the place back if he died before me,’ she said, so quietly that they had to strain to catch her words even in that low, silent room. ‘I didn’t believe him.’ She acknowledged with a sombre smile the knowledge that in this at least she had misjudged him.
Lambert wondered whether he believed her. It was Hook who said after a pause, ‘What car do you drive, Miss Godson?’